Streamlining the skill descriptions

One of my pet peeves with Guild Wars' skill system, is the way some of the skill descriptions are ambiguously worded.

Especially for skills that work in a similar fashion, the wording is often very different, confusing or outright wrong.



A simple example. Let's consider the Axe Attack Dismember.


[skill]Dismember[/skill]

• Dismember Axe Attack. If it hits, this axe blow will inflict a Deep Wound on the target foe, lowering that foe's maximum Health by 20% for 5...17 seconds.

Let's examine this.

• If it hits, this axe blow
  
  This is where the trouble starts. Some Axe Attacks are worded "If <name of the skill> hits" (e.g. Eviscerate, but then again, we already knew it was called that, so why bother naming it again), others are more concise "If this attack hits" (e.g. Executioner's Strike) and then this one speaks of an "axe blow", just to complicate things even further.
  
  You could argue that this was done to make the descriptions "not uniform, meaning less boring". Though I think it's rather "not uniform, meaning we are lazy". There's already plenty of originality in the naming and icon of the skill, let's keep the wording as simple and clear as possible.

• will inflict a Deep Wound on the target foe
  
  Now that's a wording I really like. You can't possibly misinterpret this. Okay, you could possibly get rid of "the" in "the target foe", but let's not be overzealous. However, compare this to the Sword Attack Sever Artery: "the opponent begins Bleeding". Then the problem branches even further, compare Sever Artery to Rotting Flesh: "Target fleshy creature becomes Diseased". Shouldn't that be the case for Sever Artery as well, as only fleshy creatures can suffer from Bleeding? You can see where this is going.

• lowering that foe's maximum Health by 20% for 5...17 seconds.
  
  Aah, the icing on the cake. Not only is this redundant, since you can just look at the description of Deep Wound and... hey wait a minute, that's not what Deep Wound does at all.
  
  http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Deep_wound
  
  Not only does Deep Wound lower target foe's maximum Health by 20% (up to a maximum of 100 Health), it also lowers their healing by 20%. So this wording is not only ambiguous, it's redundant and incomplete at the same time. Same thing with Sever Artery's "losing health over time", there's actually no health loss, only health degeneration. And even worse Rotting Flesh's "slowly loses health". Okay, so Disease's -4 health degeneration is "slowly" yet Bleeding's -3 is just "over time". And nothing is mentioned at all concerning Disease's contagious properties. Not that it should, you can simply look up what Disease does.

By now, I'm sure you think I'm a neurotic perfectionist who should just go out more, and while I can agree with at least two out of three of these statements, have a look at my reworked skill description of Dismember first.

• Dismember Axe Attack. If this attack hits, you inflict a Deep Wound on target foe for 5...17 seconds.
  
  BAM! Wowzers! Inconceivable! Clear, short, unambiguous, no redundancy.

And for kicks, let's do the previously mentioned Sever Artery and Rotting Flesh as well.

• Rotting Flesh Spell. Target fleshy creature becomes Diseased for 10...22 seconds.
  
  Not a big change, just removed the redundant part.

• Sever Artery Sword Attack. If this attack hits, target fleshy creature begins Bleeding for 5...21 seconds.
  
  Heck, it might even stop the odd Wammo from taking it to The Underworld.

Now you might argue that there's more urgent things to be done, that the wording is "clear enough to be understood" and that, last but not least, veteran players already know what a skill does. Exactly.

How about the newer players? Well, if we're not to care about them anymore and the main focus now is GW2, then at least have the skills in GW2 streamlined (if there are still such things as skills in GW2) or at least hire some people to do it.



But if hiring people is too expensive and you have no time to lose since you're all hard at work on GW2, let the community do it.

Seriously, we'll do it. Trust me. If you give us the opportunity, I'll be beaten to it a thousand times over by the Wiki people who'll jump on this like flies on sh-- sherry.

We're actually crazy enough about this game to streamline and proofread them for you. For free. All you'll have to do is copy/paste.



What say you?

I've been thinking of this for a long time although I'm a particularly picky git.

I believe these descriptions served a purpose in 2005 before there were elaborate wikis and knowledge was generally poor. Now they are, as you say, redundant.

On the whole, I commend Anet for their English clarity.

~

'Physical' is ambiguous here because the term physical is often used as an opponent to elemental, however elemental weapons still inflict poison. I'm unsure what this could be changed with because simply changing 'physical attacks' to 'attacks' would be untrue since wands/staves do not inflict poison while under the effects of Apply Poison.

It's a tad flowery. My suggestion would be to change it to: All adjacent foes take 7...91 fire damage. Send out a projectile that strikes target foe and all adjacent foes for 7...91 fire damage.

Anet has done a great job on the streamlining the skill descriptions, "Wild" prefix, "disrupting" prefix, "attunement" suffix, "x was y" etc.

Sure, I would like to say this is a rather good idea.

But copy/paste is haaaaaard!

You had me right up until you said "they can just look it up".

I agree wholeheartedly. Uniformity and brevity should be the primary aims of skill descriptions. If the community does all the legwork, it would be splendid that ANet adopt the changes.

The text for Mend Ailment makes me cry inside.

No, those are the skill names, not the skill descriptions (the text).

And I can't really agree with the skill names being unambiguous either, though I care a lot less about those and see them more as "artistic liberty".



Compare the following:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Distracting_Shot

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Distracting_Blow

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Distracting_Strike

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Disrupting_Chop



Sure, "Wild" means it will end Stances and "Distracting" or "Disrupting" means it will interrupt an action or Skill, but that's where the similarities end.

Let's leave skill naming at that (most skills don't follow this rule anyway) and focus on the descriptions.


Since Isle of the Nameless, the Official Wiki and /help, there really is no more excuse not to know (or learn).

Besides, these changes would actually help (new) players who are not yet in the know. I'm sure a lot of people don't realise Deep Wound also has healing altering properties and is limited to removing 100 Health.

Though there is SOME inconsistancy (especially when it comes to conditions, calling them "negative conditions" like with crystal wave or by listing them all out like with purge conditions) but for the most part, a.net's wording is very good. Skills have a LOT of nuicences that a.net maintains (look at how Bathazar's Pendelm won't prevent KD caused by a hex like thunderclap since the KD isn't caused "by a foe.")

I spent a lot of time on my first warrior trying to find a sword that did "physical" damage as opposed to all the swords I had that did "slashing" damage. Very poorly worded skill descriptors.

You're right. There is already information on-hand about these topics and plenty of places to learn from. So why a skill description change is absolutely necessary is just creating the goose chase. That, and it'd never happen anyway. They'd fob you off down the line until you get the "Wait until GW2" excuse.

I think Mend Ailment's description is so long and repetitive to turn people away from using that crap skill and use Dismiss Conditions instead, a far superior skill.

While on the note of Mend Ailment and Mend Condition; Neither of them mention they remove Cracked Armor. I was under the assumption they did.

OP: I think you are absolutely right.

There are many more skills that need a better description. After all, this is not about poetry or diversity, but about the clarity of the skill description.

Apply Poison Preparation. For 24 seconds, foes struck by your martial weapon attacks become Poisoned for 3...13 seconds.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Martial_weapon



There's room enough for poetry and diversity in the skill name and skill icon, even in parts of the skill description (inflict a Deep Wound, begin Bleeding, become Poisoned etc.), all I'm asking for is some conformity for the sake of clarity.

I'm just afraid many people will people will consider conformity to be boring. While I can respect that point of view, I think it comes over as sloppy.



And yes, of course this won't happen, but one can dream, right?

Wholeheartedly agreeing here. Should at the same time change all the "suffers Health Degeneration of -5" to "suffers Health Degeneration of 5" or "suffers Health Regeneration of -5". The way this (still!) is phrased is just blatantly wrong, implying you get healed when you are hexed with, say, Conjure Phantasm:

[skill]Conjure Phantasm[/skill]

Spell. Remove one Condition (Poison, Disease, Blindness, Dazed, Bleeding, Crippled, Burning, Weakness, or Deep Wound) from target other ally. If a Condition is removed, that ally is healed for 5...57...70 Health.

->

Spell. Remove one Condition from target other ally. If a Condition is removed, that ally is healed for 5...57...70 Health.

Some little cleanup like this wouldnt hurt

Also, for example:

Bloot ritual:

Sacrifice 17% maximum Health. For 8...13 seconds, target touched ally gains +3 Energy regeneration. Blood Ritual cannot be used on the caster. - there is clear wording for that "target other ally"

Havent we been trying to do this for a while now?

We need a much cleaner skill description system.

PLEASE Anet.

Technically, the current wording for that is correct. Gaining a negative value is the same as losing a positive value, but I can imagine it being confusing if you don't look closely ('suffer regeneration'?). Whenever possible, positive and negative signs should not be used, thereby avoiding this problem. Reworded, I'd see it as "suffers 5 health degeneration".

But I do see a lot of junk, the attack speed affecting skills especially. A lot of skills could use a touch up, especially in non-English languages. Of course, if they went out and fixed these descriptions, I imagine they would have to fix the bugs with a bunch of them, too (otherwise the new description wouldn't be any more accurate).

Id rather the skills just worked the way they say in the descriptions tbh...

The skills mentioned above specifically stem from WPE, BWE times.

Since everyone was a noob, and there was no manual, yet you started in LA, the descriptions that were given to characters by default had to be more verbose.

But since it didn't matter, they were never reworded.

The reason for this is simply that those skills served as original tutorial.

I made this thread already.

Of course, I still fully agree. Anet's templating is awful, though thankfully, it seems to be mostly restricting to Prophecies skills--the newer ones are quite a bit better.